Tuesday, January 1, 2008

EVAN WILLIAMS

The irony of trying to plan accidents, and orchestrate their frequent occurrence, is not lost on Mr Williams. So he tries mental tricks. One is to ask “what can we take away to create something new?” A decade ago, you could have started with Yahoo! and taken away all the clutter around the search box to get Google. When he took Blogger and took away everything except one 140-character line, he had Twitter. Radical constraints, he believes, can lead to breakthroughs in simplicity and entirely new things. (The Economist, December 19, 2007.)

The article gave me inspiration for my future work with creating a physical "mash-up" of the third place for small business owners and members of a new type of online community. [Editor's note: I am interested in getting in touch with fellow entrepreneurs in order to discuss my future business plans for Blue Chip Club members.]